What is a Research Training Group?

A Research Training Group is a research program that gives doctoral students the opportunity to do scientific work and at the same time provides a certain institutional framework, typically by means of some predefined activities. It is essential for a research training group to have a greater topic, energy-status data in our case, and that the topics of the individual students fit in. On the other hand, students from different disciplines or at least with different backgrounds are explicitly welcome, in order to give way to good synergy effects. PhD students participating in a research training group are expected to interact with each other intensively, be it that they meet regularly, be it that they have common activities and/or projects.

Doctoral theses written by members of the research training group are regular theses that must comply with the requirements of the respective departments. The first supervisor of the thesis typically is one of the professors participating in the research training group. There are the options that all doctorate students of a research training group have their work places in the same location, or that they are located in the lab of their supervisor. We for our part have chosen the second option because we also want the PhD students from the research training group to be connected to the area of their supervisors and their research groups.

While this general model has been copied by other funders, this research training group is funded by DFG, the German National Science Foundation. In other words, most of the students being part of the school obtain their funding indirectly from DFG.